LIVES

LIVES; Keep On Moving On

By Barbara Stewart

Published: June 29, 2003

Terri Noone had wanted to leave home ever since her two brothers grew up and moved out, but her cerebral palsy prevented her. At 29, she cannot walk and has trouble speaking intelligibly to strangers. ''I don't think about what I can't do,'' Noone explains. ''I just ask for help.'' Only after their landlord put her family's longtime rental house in Edison, N.J., on the market did her search for a place for her own reach the breaking point. ''It was time,'' she said, ''for me to leave home.''

Photos: After hunting without success for a wheelchair-accessible home, Noone and her parents, Pat (right) and Jim, a supermarket employee and a retired truck driver, settled for a suite at a Days Inn. Those months in cramped quarters galvanized her.; Last spring, a state caseworker told Noone about a housing development for the disabled run by Project Freedom, a nonprofit group. Soon after, her parents moved her into one of its apartments in Hamilton, N.J. ''She got it,'' Jim Noone (right) says wistfully, ''but only because she made it happen.''; At first, nights were frightening because, Noone says, ''I can't get out of bed by myself.'' But aides got her settled. Noone communicates with her neighbors by pointing at her ''word board,'' which lists the alphabet and useful phrases like ''Speak to me like an adult.''; Noone has been living on her own among her neighbors (above) for a year. But that will soon change: she just got engaged. She and her fiancé (not shown), who also has cerebral palsy, met as children. They hope to move to a Middlesex County home that has been adapted for the disabled. (Tim Atkinson)